Stylish, comfortable and resolutely stable
“Power corrupts,” said Lord Acton allegedly, and “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” 640 horsepower? Colour me corrupted. I just got out of the first 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S in the country. It was a German-spec car brought over for press demos. Danke schön, Porsche. Base list is $231,700 for the Coupé, $246,300 for the Cabriolet.
My Coupé tester totalled $241,540, bolstered by a few options that included Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM — it wouldn’t be a Porsche feature without a three- or four-character acronym), a $1,720 hit which lowers the car by 10 mm and brings faster-reacting dampers for improved handling with less compromise in ride comfort.
Together with Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control (sure, PDCC), which changes the anti-sway bar stiffness to reduce body roll in cornering, they further reduce the ride/ handling tradeoff that has plagued suspension designers forever.
If you have to choose things like adaptive cruise control ($2,280), lane-change assist ($1,200) and lane-keep assist ($1,390) as in my tester, maybe you’re not really ready for a car like this.
You are supposed to drive this car; it shouldn’t be driving you.
Visually, the car is hardly a stealth-mobile. The wider fenders, the unique front and rear fascias, the deployable rear spoiler, and most notably the massive wheels and tires (Pirelli P ZERO, 255/35ZR20 front, 315/30ZR21 rear) with huge brakes (420 mm rotors with no fewer than 10-piston calipers up front, 390 mm four-pots at the rear, painted bright yellow) tell you this is a serious car.
Still, compared to the GT3 RS, it’s relatively unadorned. It illustrates the simple beauty of the 911 shape, which has been remarkably unchanged over its nearly six decades of history.
The excellent fit and finish, the minor controls, the comfy and supportive front seats, the rear seats designed for circus acrobats, the trunk up front like an elephant, and the fact that you cannot see the engine at all, are similar to other 911s.
I’ll focus here on what makes the Turbo S version so different, so special.
The 3.8-litre twin-turbo flat-six engine pumps those 640 horses and 590 lb.-ft. of torque through an updated PDK (Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe) double-clutch gearbox. Fire it up, and the familiar flat-six exhaust growl greets you.
Pull away, and the first thing to strike you — it’s quick. Bloody quick. Throttle response is RIGHT NOW.
I attempted some zero to 100 km/h runs on a deserted stretch of dead-end road using the car’s built-in timer. But I was so busy holding on, I couldn’t work the buttons fast enough.
These sprints looked dramafree from outside, because thanks to the various control systems, there’s no wheel spin, just the bellow of the car as it disappears over the horizon.
Trust me: the factory-supplied time of 2.7 seconds is no lie. Of course, at 100 km/h, the car is just catching its breath on its way to a theoretical top end of 330 km/h.
This makes the Turbo S one of the very fastest cars you can legally operate on Canadian roads. OK, the “330 km/h” part is not so legal ...
What is most impressive is the continual improvement Porsche has made in reducing turbo lag. In this car, there’s a continuous surge of power to the red line, upshift, and do it again.
As always, that PDK shifts seamlessly and immediately.
Sure, you can play with the shift paddles, but you won’t be able to beat the machine.
The shift lever is the same as in other new-generation 911s — forward for Reverse, back for Drive, push a button for Park. In other words, they should throw it out and go back to PRNDL — Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, Low. That design ain’t broke; stop trying to fix it.
The steering is as precise as you’d expect from a Porsche and offers what seems to be perfect weight. The full-time four-wheel drive system is rear-axle biased, but can deliver up to 62 per cent of the torque to the front wheels if it deems it necessary to do so.
You have a choice of five drive modes via a round knob at the 5 o’clock position on the steering wheel, each of which tailors things like throttle response and transmission reaction to suit.
The uprated suspension in the Turbo S does the business. Ride quality was actually not as harsh as I feared, although those ultra-low aspect ratio tires set up a bit of bumpthump on sharp road irregularities, of which there is no shortage here in early spring.
A separate button on the dash allows you to firm up the dampers for even more control. It did make the suspension react more sharply, but frankly, it was difficult to evaluate their handling benefit under these less-than-perfectly-controlled test conditions.
Porsches, especially the more powerful 911s, have a somewhat sinister reputation for tricky on-the-limit handling, what with all that engine weight hanging out aft of the rear axle.
That is pretty much a thing of the past.
Sure, if you shut off all the nanny systems and really ham-fist it, it might get a bit tail-happy. But as hard as I dared drive this car on public roads, it remained resolutely stable. Wish your way around that corner; it follows your bidding. The car is equally adept at just cruising around, comfortable and tractable. Not the least bit fussy.
The satellite radio was not functioning in my car, and apparently there is no AM radio in Germany because all I could get was FM. Still, the Bose sound system was its usual excellent self.
Every advance in the 911’s development has expanded its bandwidth, with more performance at the sharp end, and more comfort at the other. The Turbo S continues this tradition. Unlike a lot of exotics, the
Turbo S is a car you could live with, day to day, season to season.
Now, you have no doubt heard the old real estate adage that buying the cheapest house in a good neighbourhood is the best investment.
You can get a 911 that looks almost the same as the Turbo S for less than half its price. But if you want the ultimate 911, you’ll just have to pony up.
One test drive and you will be making another call to your bank manager.